


The Twitter Demon

by GiantEyedCrow



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU (Minor Changes), Angst, Bucky’s not dead he’s just missing y’all, Everyone is gay guys, F/F, Gen, Gen z, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Only Rated teen and up because I curse like a sailor, Peter Parker is gen z, Sassy Steve Rogers, Social Media, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers is a Leftist, Steve Rogers is a Twitter demon, Steve Rogers/Stoicism, Steve is the twitter demon, Texting, The Avengers are a family and they live in the tower together and everything is nice, Trans Peter Parker, Twitter, Wanda Maximoff is Gen Z
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25376671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiantEyedCrow/pseuds/GiantEyedCrow
Summary: The Avengers have survived a lot together; Alien invasions, various assassins, murder robots, Hydra being the fucking worst ever, an insane amount of press conferences, and Nick Fury’s worst moods.But for some unknown reason, who Steve Rogers is— where he comes from, who he’s loved— is a mystery to the team, and the new century is a little bit of a mystery to him to.With the help of the Avengers favorite psychic, Steve learns about the new world, and the Avengers learn about him... through twitter.Chaos and minor feels ensue.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Wanda Maximoff & Peter Parker, Wanda Maximoff & Steve Rogers, past Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes
Comments: 23
Kudos: 192





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Basically,,, everything is the same except:  
> \- Wanda’s a kid and she goes to school  
> \- 2 years Post AoU but they still live in the tower  
> \- Sam and Wanda live in the tower too :^)  
> \- We acknowledge trauma because this is the lord’s house  
> \- Bucky is still the winter soldier and Steve is under the impression he’s dead  
> \- Civil War ain’t happening  
> \- Wanda has an accent and remembers where she came from because it makes sense
> 
> Also all of the younger Avengers are gen Z

Tony said that Steve was a cagey man. 

“It’s a character trait,” Tony had explained to Wanda. “Like somebody who keeps to themself, doesn’t let anything about their lives slip.” What a word. Cagey. Wanda did look up the word later for full clarification [on webster’s dictionary and urban dictionary, because Tony’s use of slang was odd sometimes] and realized that Cagey was defined as reluctant to give information owing to caution or suspicion.

Which made sense. The only time she ever had a true and honest interaction with Steve was when she peered inside of his head and nearly gave him a heart attack picking his memories apart; when she saw Peggy Carter and all those flashing cameras and everyone dancing under those pretty lights; when she took him back to the war. Sure, Steve was a bad liar, and as honest as Abe, something else Tony said, but he never told the full truth.

The word Cagey seemed to be derived from the word cage, despite its ‘unknown’ origins, which sounded a lot less optional than its root, though. 

“Why?” Wanda sat cross legged on a work table, shifting so that she could set her chin on her knee.

Tony leaned over the metal work table a part of his mangled armor was laid out on, sweat beading on his forehead while he torched a piece of it. “Well, Nat and Clint have their super secret spy club and Bruce hates the government while kinda working for it,” He explained, wiping some of the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m gonna be honest, I’ve read all of his files more than once, and—”

“Creepy.”

“—You’ve been in all of our heads?”

“Touche.”

“Anyway, I’ve read through his files and there’s a lot of redacted shit in there. I mean a lot,” He leaned against the workbench, hip pressing into the table and crossing his arms. “You ever read his Wikipedia page?”

“You have?”

“Maximoff, you barely know what a boundary is. You should know by now that I might be a little paranoid.” Tony rolled his eyes so hard that they could’ve come rolling out of his head.

“Okay but Wikipedia is a weird place to look when you have FRIDAY. What’d you find?”

“Nothing. That’s the weirdest part,” Tony sighed, setting the blow torch down on the table. “I scrolled down to Personal Life, just like every other normal person on this planet—”

“You mean every other gay person,”

“Like I said, every other normal person,” He scoffed without missing a beat. “And there’s three dinky little paragraphs about his parents expiring, him growing up in Brooklyn acting like a goddamned toy breed, Carter being his sweetheart, and him and James Barnes being best pals. He called him Bucky, d’ya know that? Bucky!”

“So you pretty much can’t find anything on him,” Wanda realized.

“Zip.”

“Zip?”

“Like ‘nothing.’”

“How?”

“I don’t know? Look it up, linguist. The usual, FRI.” Tony dropped his welders’ mask, and FRIDAY started playing Led Zeppelin while Tony went back to working on his armor. Wanda just sighed and wandered over to the door. Tony lifted his mask one more time. “You see Peter, cn’ya send ‘em up?” Tony shouted over the music. Wanda just gave him a thumbs up and made her way down to the common floor.

Later on, over dinner [or breakfast? Did time really qualify the type of meal you were eating] at three in the morning, elbows and Pad Thai on the table and the phone Tony gave her in one hand, plastic fork in the other, Wanda did in fact look up how on earth an action came to mean the word ‘nothing.’ And once she was done, she checked Steve’s Wikipedia page. It couldn’t hurt.

With the pale white glow of the scant looking page washing over her face in the dim light of the communal floor, Wanda scrolled straight down to Personal Life while shoveling a greasy fork-full of bean sprouts, noodles, and tofu into her mouth. Tony was right. There was just about nothing there.

Almost as if it had been wiped clean, or most had been wordlessly redacted from the page. A quick trip to the WWII section, along with a few paragraphs about his Showgirl [again, Tony.] days, but nothing about who exactly his parents were or how life was during the depression. Anything too personal was scarce.

Wanda took another bite out of her Pad Thai and closed out of the browser, setting her phone face down on the table and propping her head up on a closed fist. What on earth could have been kept so quiet that his Wiki page was so short when his life was so long, and all Shield and SSR files had so much blocked out? Was Steve hiding something? Was the military hiding something? Probably, amongst other things.

“Trouble sleeping?” Wanda nearly jumped out of her skin when Steve’s voice appeared behind her. Christ, he walked quietly— he seemed like the type of person to be a bull in a China shop, what with his giant stature and ability to knock someone into next week, but in reality they probably should’ve put a bell on him.

Wanda twisted around to meet Steve, who’d appeared from the stairwell looking like he’d just gotten done wandering around Manhattan all night. That was something he did; his memory was great, but spending seventy years as a frozen slab probably meant that things were gonna be a little bit different than they used to be. He went at night because the crowds were a little overwhelming during the day.

Her eyes followed him as he sauntered over to the table she was sat at while taking off his bomber jacket. His temperature ran a little hotter than everybody elses, but his nose and cheeks were a little reddened from wandering New York at three in the morning during November.

“Forgot to eat dinner,” Wanda supplied, relaxing her shoulders once Steve placed his jacket on the back of his chair and sat down, working a purple cube with dials and buttons on all of its sides between his hands. “So here I am. You?”

“I don’t need as much sleep,” Steve said. That was already on his Wikipedia page. “New York is so… different. Sometimes it feels like the only things that stayed the same are the churches in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Ironic.” 

“Very.” Steve’s eyes wandered while he spoke, eyes bouncing around the room as if he was looking for something. “Not seeing slums is nice. Homeless people, not so much.” He spoke an afterthought, almost biting back on his words like they were bitter.

Wanda paused with her fork poised to give her another bite of now cold noodles and tofu. Her brows pinched together, lips curled in disgust. “...Oh?” If she was just finding out that Steve Rogers was secretly a prick, it was gonna suck.

Steve’s eyes wandered for a second, and he stared at the ceiling, blinking at the dimmed lights in the minimalist chandelier Tony’d hung from it. “Literally just laziness at this point.”

“Steve, some people are just poor,” Wanda practically spat, dropping the fork and folding her hands in front of her, a sneer fully formed on her face. Head tilted and nose wrinkled, she looked just about ready for a fight.

Steve immediately came back down to reality looking a little startled by her tone, and his eyes widened when he’d realized what he said. “Oh God, sorry. No, the government’s lazy, not homeless people,” Steve explained, shaking his head. “They’re the ones that got screwed over.”

Wanda snorted, her defenses dissolving instantly as she picked her fork back up. A lot of the people in Sokovia were poor, even before Ultron basically destroyed it and forced everyone to flee. Even though there wasn’t exactly enough to go around for everyone, at least they looked out for one another. “Thank the lord.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve went back to letting his eyes wander around the room, thumbs twisting one of the dials on his fidget toy. “Apparently… who was it… Lyndon B. Johnson? Yeah, he made some revisions to social security. I haven’t been here that long but they’re either outdated or ineffective.” 

“Yeah well, it’s mostly mentally ill people, veterans, and queer people who are homeless.” 

Steve’s practically reared at Wanda, head slightly cocked to the side like Wanda had said a bad word— a really bad word. “Queer?”

“...Yeah?”

Steve looked down at the fidget toy in his hands, eyes tight with confusion. He looked back up at her. “That’s a really terrible thing to say.”

“What?” She scanned his face, puzzled. “Iyano— Yeah okay, so a lot of stuff happened when you weren’t here. Stonewall Uprising. Compton Cafeteria riots. Don’t ask, don’t tell literally… happened while you were in the ice—”

“Clinton-Obama, right?”

“Yeah. But basically people started using ‘queer’ as a way to identify themselves more— it really means someone who isn’t Cishet at this point.”

“Cishet?”

“Like in agreement with the gender they were assigned at birth and strictly attracted to the gender opposite of theirs. Short for Cisgender and Heterosexual.”

“Oh.” Steve started playing with some of the louder pieces on the cube like they were more effective than the quieter ones. “Okay.” He looked like he had a lot to think through.

“Some people don’t like it, the word queer, though, and that’s okay. I won’t around you if it makes you uncomfortable.” 

“No, it’s okay. I think I get it now.” Steve kept hitting the loud buttons on his cube, looking like he still had something to say. Something to ask maybe.

Wanda slapped the top of the Styrofoam plate down and shut it before getting up to go to the kitchen. She opened up the drawer and pulled out a green sticky note. You eat this, I’ll know, you’ll die. -Wanda. Satisfied, and somewhat certain that’d stop Clint from stealing her leftovers, she stuck it onto the top and shoved it into the fridge with the rest of the Avengers leftovers, which each had names and half empty threats of their own on lime green sticky notes.

Turning away from the fridge, she found that Steve still had a thoughtful scowl drawn across his face. Wanda just hummed and grabbed the kettle from one of the cupboards and set it down on the counter. “You want some hot chocolate?”

Steve looked at her like she’d just dragged him out of some confused fog. “Sure. Are you gonna make it with milk?”

Wanda made a gagging noise. “No, water.”

“The way God intended,” Steve nodded.

“You have great taste, Captain Rogers,” Wanda said while staring at her distorted image in the kettle, filling it with water from the sink. She put the top on it, set it on the burner, and turned it up to the highest heat setting before returning to her seat parallel to Steve. “Speaking of— do you know what happened at Stonewall?”

Steve’s eyebrows scrunched together again like Wanda was administering a quiz. “Hm— Greenwich, Storme DeLavrie’s nearly arrested, sparking the fight, and Marsha P. Johnson throws the first brick, right?”

“Not the full story, but you’ve got it.”

Steve chewed the inside of his mouth while they both listened to the sound of water heating up and rumbling inside of the kettle, still looking like he was holding something back. Being cagey. Wanda clenched her fists and tried to make herself look busy by getting up and finding some hot chocolate packages in the cupboard and some of the almost comically large mugs Steve kept in the next one.

“Marshmallows or no?” Wanda asked, standing on her toes and pulling a bag full of jumbo marshmallows off of the top shelf.

“Yes, please.” Steve, curt all the same, bit at his words like he was a little nervous, and as Wanda poured hot water over cocoa powder into two giant mugs, dropping three marshmallows in either of them, she started to feel a little bit like she was trying her hardest not to scare Steve away. It felt a little bit like she was trying to befriend a stray cat.

Sitting back down in front of Steve with the two mugs, Wanda slid one across the table to give to him. “Thank you.” Steve flicked the mug like it was a nervous tic, and each time it gave a small ting as he waited for the drink to cool and for the marshmallows to melt.

Finally, after an extremely tense three minutes of complete silence, he said something. “Hey, Wanda?” He was still staring daggers at the capsizing marshmallows in his hot chocolate as bleach white mixed with brown and melted into a tan colored foam at the top of the cup. “D’you learn that in school? I’ve got no idea what they’re teaching you all in public schools these days.”

Wanda exhaled sharply in something that could’ve been a laugh. “Nope. I’ve had some really good teachers but I had to learn that on the internet like everybody else. They weren’t any better with our own history in Sokovia either.”

“Hm.”

“And you know what? It’s not really common knowledge with the straights. Queer people know at least a little queer history most of the time but if you don’t have a reason to learn…”

Steve cringed a little, then froze, almost holding his breath, and Wanda watched as he finally picked up is mug and sipped some of the hot chocolate, seemingly trying to play off the reaction. When he put it back down on the table, his mouth was set in another scowl. “The Straights?”

Wanda almost spat hot chocolate. “Oh god, you know, sometimes I forget you’re old.”

“I’m 33, kid.”

“Yeah and it’s super creepy because you’re like, a millennial, but you talk like you’re in The Wizard of Oz.”

Steve rolled his eyes and sighed. “Who are the straights?”

Wanda laughed so hard her stomach started to hurt. “I know it’s rude to laugh but the oblivion is very funny.” Wanda took another sip of her hot chocolate and looked up at the ceiling, trying to do a full retrace of the phrase. “So you know fuckin’... Fox News, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“They really like to reduce people down to their parts. The Blacks. The gays. The transgenders. Words that should be descriptors instead of being turned into nouns.”

“Gee, sounds familiar.”

Wanda snorted. “Well, we started doing it to them. My favorites are: The straights. Heteros. Gay twitter can be very funny.”

“Gay twitter?”

“It’s like a side of twitter. Like everybody who’s a similar thing getting together and sharing ideas. Mostly memes though.”

“Memes?”

“Like— okay, y’know what, this would be a lot easier if you could teach yourself. It’s like swimming, you just throw them in and everything works out.” Wanda held her hand out. “Can I see your phone?”

Another very old person thing Steve did— he just handed it over! Wanda couldn’t imagine. If Tony or Nat or even Clint asked Wanda for her phone, she’d probably hide it, less so because there was something to hide and more so because it was personal. Wanda went straight to the app store and hit download. As the tiny circle displayed the completed progress, she wondered if Steve could… handle Twitter. It was possibly the most vicious place to ever exist on the internet yet. 

Ultimately, Wanda decided that anyone who could handle the trenches could probably handle Twitter. That, and Tony stark being the tower’s resident smartass. “You wanna be public about it or have a stealth account?”

“What’s it matter?”

“People use twitter to talk about politics.”

“Public.”

Seemed about right.

“Okay, I’ll make your @ and display name your actual name— oh that’s taken. I’m shocked. What’s your middle name?”

“Grant.”

“Cool. Added your middle initial. I’ll just make your password ‘fuck@lln@z1s,’ it just makes sense. No spaces, the a’s are @ signs, like the a inside of a circle, the I is a 1, everything’s in lowercase.”

Steve just nodded while Wanda put his account together. 

“Okay, I’m gonna make your display icon that one picture of you from when you were tiny because never forget your roots.” That was the one thing Steve’s Wikipedia was actually useful for. “Okay, time to write a bio. It’s like a few words about who you are. I’m gonna put He/Him because it’s… almost internet courtesy to put your pronouns in your bio, and you should lead by example. What’s something else you want to say?”  
“What’s the president’s @ again?”

“...@realDonaldTrump.”

“Fuck @realDonaldTrump.”

“Yeah.”

“No, I want that to be my summary.”

Wanda laughed so hard that by the end of it, her voice was coming out in oxygen starved screeches, and she was worried she’d drop Steve’s phone on the floor. “Are you sure?”

“Am I allowed to do that?”

“I mean yeah but that’s one way to make enemies on the internet.”

“Eh, well it’s the right thing to say.”

“Got it.” Wanda shook her head and started typing in the scant, vague bio before placing his location at The Avenger Tower, Manhattan. It worked. “This. This is the blueprint.”

“To what?”

“You’re so funny, I’m sorry— no it’s like the best thing. Like Lady Gaga’s Born this Way.”

“So like… Louis Armstrong——”

“Yes!”

“—Or Beyonce.”

“Beyonce?”

Steve’s nose wrinkled, lip curling accusingly. “Do you not like Beyonce?”

“No, no, I love Beyonce it’s just— how do you know who Beyonce is?”

“I’m a millennial, and Lemonade is a great album. Simple equation.”  
“You’re going to fit in so well.” Wanda started following people, starting with Beyonce, then the rest of the Avengers that had Twitter, so just her, Tony, and Sam. Excluding Natasha because she was a shield agent who sometimes did spy work, and spies weren’t supposed to have twitter. Her spam was a secret between them. 

A few meme and art accounts and Steve’s twitter was good to go, just before the sun came up too. Wanda handed Steve his phone back before finishing off her hot chocolate and giving a yawning stretch. “Okay, a few ground rules: Do Not anger the Barbz; they’re cool, they’re normally for Bernie, they’re just vicious when provoked.”

“Barbz?”

“Nicki Minaj stans. She’s a—”

“A rapper. I know. What’s a stan?”

“Someone who really likes a person or a thing. Also, do not piss off the Kpop stans. There’s too many and they’re too powerful. Talking shit about the thing they like will do that.”

“Got it.”

“If someone hits random buttons on their keyboard, it’s exclamatory, like a way to say you’re excited or amazed; that or you’re laughing. If someone calls you sis, like S-I-S, it's like a term of endearment but can also be an insult, like honey or bitch, not a term of relation or gender,” Wanda explained, giving another yawn. “And finally, think before you tweet. Probably something like: Is this stupid or am I going to go to jail. Oh, and don’t correct people’s spellng unless they’ve said something stupid. That’s probably more important than the last one. Oh, and if you don’t understand a phrase or abbreviation, just look it up or ask me.”

“Understood. Thanks”

Wanda got up and placed her mug in the sink. “Of course. Have fun.” And with that, their conversation was over, and it was time for Wanda to sleep late into the afternoon


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Extremely minor use of homophobic language (F Slur)
> 
> Y'all if I accidentally tag a real person's twitter I'm so sorry I'm just trying to come up with some funny ass @'s  
> (I did mean to tag Richard Spencer tho he sucks)

Wanda woke up to the 4 O’Clock sun striking her face and the sound of her phone buzzing against her bedside table incessantly, which was typically a sign of a good sleep in her book.

Sitting up and pulling her fingers through the rat’s nest she called a head of hair, she stifled a yawn and felt around her bedside table blindly, pushing past an empty glass that was once filled with water and pulling her phone off the charger.

Peter, Natasha, and Pepper were giving Wanda’s phone the work when it was supposed to be a lazy Post-Hydra-Base-Raid-Fall-Break-Sunday.

Wanda decided to open up Peter’s messages first, because if Pepper had texted her more than just once within half an hour— scratch that, a day, she was probably about to get… What did Tony say Pepper did? Right: Read the riot act. 

Peter🐁: Wanda.

Peter🐁: Wanda, mistakes have been  
made.

Peter🐁: Bitch wake the fuck up we  
have a PROBLEM

Peter🐁: Wanda Maximoff, you  
have created a MONSTER.

Peter🐁: JDJXJXJXJ He’s already  
VERIFIED 

Peter🐁: What have you done?  
What did you teach him? I feel like  
if I blink hard enough it’s gonna say  
@Jaboukie instead of @SteveGRogers.

Wanda: Lol I just woke up

Wanda: What did he do

Peter🐁: Pepper is going to  
murder you

Wanda: Ksjxjxjd yeah she texted  
me twice in 20 minutes

Peter🐁: rip

Wanda: I’m serious, what did  
he say?

Peter🐁: Check for yourself.

If Peter was right, Pepper was gonna wanna stand on Wanda’s neck, and Tony was gonna want a high five. Not necessarily a win-win, but maybe it was worth it. Wanda took a deep breath and opened Peppers two messages, both from 36 minutes ago. One was a screenshot, and the other had words.

The screenshot was the top of the trending page at what Pepper’s phone read as 16:02, and it didn’t look pretty. At number one was #CaptainAmerica, two was #Talkyoshitspangles, which put Wanda on the floor, and finally, #CaptainUnAmerican, which wasn’t as clever.

Beneath it was one single word:

🔪Pepper🔪: Why?

And there were just three messages from Nat:

Nat🕷: Omg you’re a genius

Nat🕷: Lol Peter said he thought  
it was Jaboukie me too 

Nat🕷: Why is he showing off  
more of his personality on the  
internet than in the tower

Wanda: Maybe I should’ve put his  
account on private jdjxjxjd 

Nat🕷: God, no. This is gold

Nat🕷: Pepper’s gonna get you, tho.

Wanda decided it was time to check Steve’s twitter. He couldn’t have done that much damage in that many hours, right? She kinda did let him talk shit about the president the first step of the way and then proceed to give him free range to the internet, but there was only so much damage you could do within a couple hours, right?

Maybe not. The man was verified, he’d tweeted 7 times thus far, his profile pic was the same— hopefully because he liked it and not because he didn’t know how to change it— and he had changed his location to Hell.

Hell. That was it. His bio was exactly the same as she’d made it. God, it was pretty easy for him to figure this technology stuff out.

Wanda: BSSBNDNS WHY IS  
HIS LOCATION HELL???

Peter🐁: Girl it gets worse.  
He learned the fairy emojis thing.

Wanda: Oh my god.

Wanda scrolled down to read the 7 tweets he’d thought up, probably all on his own within the 18 hours of having the account.

|@SteveGRogers: Can Tangerine daddy please stop  
|  
@RichardSpencerOfficial: Stop what? Stop  
murderers and drug dealers from coming into  
the greatest country in the world?  
|  
@SteveGRogers: No, breathing ✨🧚♀️  
|  
@TRUMP202039988: Did you just threten  
the president???  
|  
@SteveGRogers: *Threaten

Not only was Steve a fast learner, but he also had a truly impeccable memory. And he hadn’t broken the rule about angering the Barbz or the Kpop stans. Maybe there was a yet in front of that, though.

|@SteveGRogers: @theRealDonaldTrump Every day I spend on American soil while you’re President is a day in hell 🙃

|@SteveGRogers: @JKRowling, get it together and open your purse, doll.  
|  
@SteveGRogers: Venmo your local  
transgender woman $25. @FEMINASTY,  
@Vogue.pull.up, love ya!  
|  
@Gayliens: AYE AYE CAPTAIN  
|  
@Jimins.Eyelash: This man’s MIND.  
|  
@Timothée.Break.My.Kneecaps: Y’all, I  
think we found this month’s white boy-

Wanda would have to explain the honor @Timothée.Break.My.Kneecaps had bestowed upon him later that day.

|@FreedomMan45: @SteveGRogers TRUMP 2020  
|  
@SteveGRogers: People with taste stan @AOC 

Wanda had created a monster, a sarcastic, fairy emoji using, terf roasting, mud slinging monster, and frankly, she didn’t regret anything at all. Maybe Pepper would be a little peeved, but if anything, he seemed to be upholding Captain America’s image pretty well for his first stroll in the park

Peter: You and me, coffee at 5:00. At our  
Starbucks. Pepper can’t get us there lmao

Wanda: See you there :^)

Before climbing out of bed to start on her way, Wanda followed Steve. The moment he wished death upon Donald Trump again, she needed to know. Fishing through the replies for a couple laughs, Wanda realized there was a fair chance she’d be late if she didn’t hurry the hell up, and got out of bed, brushing her teeth in the shower and combing her hair while putting on deodorant.

Her phone buzzed once, and then a thousand more times. Probably Steve again. She’d probably have to end up muting him if he kept talking so much shit. Pulling on an oversized knit cardigan and shoving her wallet and phone into her back pockets, Wanda rushed out the door and into the elevator. “Is Sam here, Fri?”

“Yes Ms. Maximoff— communal floor number three.”

“Take me to him, please.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Sam required a wellness check before Wanda went wandering around in the city. It was annoying sometimes and made her feel more like a weapon of mass destruction than a person sometimes, especially if she was running late. But in reality, Wanda knew that he did it with Bruce, and Tony, and Clint, and even Steve. They just didn’t leave the tower as much.

The second the elevator doors opened, Sam’s head snapped to the side so he could meet Wanda’s eyes. “Child, you are something else.” Sam let out a bark of laughter. “Why, Wanda? Why? Also, why are you just getting up at 4:50?”

“Shit, I’m late. Oh, and— Okay, well Steve let it slip he didn’t know what a meme was so I just decided to introduce him to twitter and see what happened.”

“You know Pepper’s plotting your assassination, right? And where are you going?”

“Yeah, well I think it makes him more… lovable. And I’m going to meet Peter at Starbucks so I can figure out how to survive her attempt.”

“‘Can tangerine daddy please stop,’ admit that you’ve made a fatal mistake.” Sam looked Wanda up and down with a careful stare. “You take your meds?”

“Never, it was a stroke of unintended genius. Yes.”

“Did you eat?”

“That’s what I’m gonna go do.”

“No powers until after you eat.”

“Got it.”

“Venti Pumpkin Spice latte isn’t a meal.”

“I know.”

“Good. Say hi to Peter for me.”

“Will do. See you soon Sam. If you see Steve tell him to stop wishing death upon the president before the CIA decides they’ve had enough.”

“Got it.”

Wanda slid into the booth Peter was waiting for her at, headphones in and scrolling along on his merry way at 6:00 sharp. “Sorry I’m late. I would lie and blame it on Sam— he says hello by the way— but if I were to be honest with you I spend an extra 20 minutes scrolling through the replies on Steve’s twitter. I have no idea who raised the comedians on that app but they are doing God’s work.”

Peter just gave her a look of playful contempt before sliding two chocolate croissants, three pieces of pumpkin bread, and two cake pops to the center of the table. Wanda reached into her wallet and forked over $15. Peter took $10 and pulled his phone out again before passing her an iced coffee.“Ten minutes ago: ‘@Jus.BrettKavanaugh dig a ditch and fall in, peach.’” Peter looked up at Wanda, eyes wide. She could practically hear Pepper’s voice, asking: Why?

“Concise. Eloquent. No profanity. I see no issue.”

“Five minutes ago: @theRealDonaldTrump: Steve Rogers is Unpatriotic, Unamerican, and shows no pride for his country! A sad day for America!” Peter sighed. “Two minutes ago: @SteveGRogers: I know you are but what am I?Jingo.”

“At least he knows to punch up.”

“An hour ago: @SteveGRogers Katniss Everdeen simply did what she had to do, and I respect that.”

“It’s true-?”

“Wanda, I think you broke Steve.” Peter’s tired groan broke into a laugh as he placed his phone face down on the table between them. Of course, it went straight back to buzzing and chirping, but what could one do? “He was like, the one thing we could agree on— The maple syrup and scotch tape that was holding the entire country together.”

“Steve already didn’t like Trump, or Lady G, or Kavanaugh anyway, he just couldn’t announce it.”

“Yeah, because Pepper had strict rules on when and why he was allowed to talk to reporters.”

“C’mon, you have to admit that it’s kind of— okay, really entertaining. Besides, I think this is good for him.”

“I mean, Steve somehow does understand gen z humor, so it is fun— fairy emojis, dear god,” Peter shook his head. “But the amount of death threats and slurs I’m seeing in the replies is making me lose braincells— did you know people still think ‘fag’ is a valid… not even insult, criticism? I’ve got my healing factor and brain rattles around in my head like a fuckin’ grain of rice while sifting through his replies. How is this good for him?”

“Last night I set the account up for him at like four in the morning, but I think we were having a— what is it called? It’s not chest to chest, no—” Wanda reached into her pocket and fished out her phone, putting it on silent. It’s endless buzzing and chirping was almost too much.

“Heart to heart?” Peter supplied, a hint of amazement in his voice.

“Yeah, like we were just talking. It was kinda hard because he doesn’t know a lot of modern history stuff or slang and my english isn’t perfect— also he uses old-timey slang sometimes— but we just talked about some stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like… Stonewall and some other history stuff. He also didn’t know that the word queer was like, okay now. We just talked about that kind of stuff.”

“How’d you get on that in the first place?”

“Well, at first we were talking about homeless people and the statistics, and y’know, that’s just a part of it. But the weirdest thing about it was that I just taught him some words we use now, and it was okay and good. But...”

“But?”

“I don’t know, he just seemed like he was holding something back. Not saying something wanted to, maybe?”

A long pause passed between them, and Wanda looked up from the nailpolish she was chipping off herself to find that Peter had been staring daggers at her the entire time. “You don’t think—?

“I really do. And you know, it’s cool now. But I just felt like he may have needed to see it for himself before I asked him about it. And yeah, maybe I did kinda create a twitter demon in the process, but you know what, he hasn’t said anything actually problematic.”

“So we’re just going to ignore that Captain America is in Gay Panic and just toss him on twitter and see what happens?” Peter took a sip of his coffee and combed his hair back with his fingers. “You’re in too deep and you know it, Maximoff.”

“When you phrase it like that…”

“It sounds bad,” Peter reached into the stockpile of food he’d chosen and devoured a piece of pumpkin bread. “Look, I’ve gotta admit, sometimes when I talk to Steve I feel like he’s gonna run away if I push him too hard too, but somebody’s gotta say something to him,” He said while stuffing a cake pop into his mouth. 

“Maybe Tony?”

“Nah. Tony’s too awkward for that kinda conversation, it’d end in a cat fight,” Peter sighed while scratching his head. 

Wanda reached for a chocolate croissant. “Sam?”

“I mean, probably the best course of action—” Peter explained, washing down the second croissant with some more coffee “—But he might think Sam’s tryna’ shrink his head and get defensive about it.”

“Shrink his head?”  
“Be a therapist about it, and if you know what therapists did to the gays back in his day, you’d think he’d be right to act like that,” Peter said, grabbing yet another piece of pumpkin bread and stuffing it in his mouth. “I mean, I don’t think he thinks any bad is gonna happen if he just tells us, he publicly called out possibly the world’s most loved terf—” He took another sip of coffee, and the annoying slurping sound of an empty cup sounded. “But he’s gotta be holding out on us for a reason, y’know?”

“Has Tony ever told you about his SHIELD and SSR files?” Wanda asked, taking a sip of her coffee. 

“No, why?”

“I just feel like there’s something we’re not… supposed to know at this point,” Wanda explained while reaching for the last cakepop. Peter took the pumpkin bread. “I haven’t seen the files myself, but Tony says there’s a lot of blacked out information in it.”

“That was done a lot in World Wars though.”

“Yeah, to letters home. Those are files that the public can’t attain, why is so much of it redacted?”

Peter took a massive bite out of his pumpkin bread, a thoughtful look drawn across his face. The kid ate like he hadn’t in days because of his metabolism, and even if he was only a little over half of Steve’s weight and no where near matching in height, whether or not he ate more or less than him was debatable. If it weren’t for the powers, Wanda would blame it on the testosterone, but that only seemed to be helping his stomach become a black hole.

“Y’know that joke about Steve and his war bff being like Dan and Phil? What was his name?” Peter slurped on his coffee and shook the ice inside of the cup knowing damn well that it was empty.

“...James Barnes?”

“Yeah, but he called him something that sounded like a pet name.”

“Bucky.”

“Yeah! Okay, did you ever see that footage of them in the war? They were in love, Wanda.”

“Really, Parker?” Wanda examined her black nails, a red glow dancing around her fingers. In reality, this would be so much easier if she could just get straight to the point and wander around in his brain for a few minutes. She knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, and would probably never do that kind of thing to anyone again— Steve was one of the sweetest human beings Wanda’d ever met, but when she moved into the tower, it was like making direct eye contact with Wanda would kill him.

Like what she had done could push someone as good willed and forgiving as Steve Rogers away from her long after The Black Widow herself had forgiven her, which was a difficult thing to achieve: forgiveness from an ex Russian assassin. “You know that’s just some funny story some 12 year old on the internet came up with that just got taken way too far.”

“They lived together before the war, Wanda! And the record says that he was extremely distraught after Barnes died in combat.”

“He was his childhood friend, of course he was distraught,” Wanda reasoned, carefully folding their trash into a napkin. “If you never came back from a mission, I’d be pretty fucked up too.”

“I don’t mean he was very very sad about it and needed a pep talk, though, I mean there’s records saying he wanted every member of Hydra dead or rotting in prison because of it,” Peter’s voice was raised just a little— it was pretty obvious he actually believed it. Probably even more now. “Like there’s accounts by Howard Stark that the military considered honorably discharging him because of a psych eval. Carter convinced them not to because he was helping push the war forward.”

“How did you find out about that?”

“Tony told me,” Peter shot back. Of course it was Tony. It always came back to Tony when it was something about Steve being a mysterious bitch. “Howard used to tell him stories about Steve when he was a kid.”

“Weren’t Carter and Steve planning on getting married anyway?”

“Okay, theory. Hear me out, hear me out…” Peter started, waving his hands around like a madman. “This was the military in the 40’s. Already super gay. And to make it even more obvious, she knows everybody and actually got a few people pardoned for… indecency.”

“What are you implying?”

“Maybe… maybe it was an act.”

“Peter—”

“C’mon, just think about it,” Peter whined. Both of their phones vibrated with a text notification at the same time, but he didn’t shut up about it while they were grabbing for them. “Fate of the military’s entire reputation is at stake… maybe the country’s. Steve wasn’t just a soldier before he went under. He was the maple syrup and scotch tape for a reason, y’know?”

Wanda held her thought while they both opened twin messages from the Avengers group chat + Pepper, the strongest Avenger.

Pepper: Avengers dinner tonight, 20:30. Fettucini Alfredo— Nat and I are cooking :^)

Tony: Cya @ nine.

Sam: Got it.

Pepper: Tony, don’t test me.

Pepper: Also, Vision, you have to be there.  
It’s not an eating meal.

Vision: What are we talking about?

Tony: Uh-Oh. Can I bring Stephen?

Pepper: Fine. Just don’t be late.

Tony: >:^( Fine.

Wanda’s blood went cold, and when she looked up at Peter, he had a dumb looking smile drawn across his face. “Well, it looks like it’s off to the glue factory for you.”

“The glue factory?”

“Because glue is made out of horse hooves.”

“I’m not a horse?”

“No, it’s just like… it’s just a figure of speech, doesn’t matter. Anyway, Steve and Bucky were in love and I’ll put 20 dollars on the table over that.”

“Peter, I’ve been in his head. His worst nightmare was talking to Peggy again,” Wanda said in a low voice. “He was afraid of confronting the love of his—” Wanda sighed while climbing out of the booth, coffee in one hand and trash in the other “You know what? Bet. I need to stop blowing my paychecks on thai food anyway.”

Peter took the trash from her and extended his free hand. They shook, and stepped outside, instantly bracing against the cold. Iced coffee was probably not the best decision, but if it was ever an option, it was probably the only option. That didn’t stop any regret from being free flowing, though. “I’m gonna walk back to the tower, you wanna head home first or just call May?”

“She’s working late today— I’ll just text her,” Peter typed in a message while they walked up the block, shivering just a little. “Free food. God bless,” his smile at the prospect of white sauce and garlic bread seemed to have enough warmth for the two of them, though.

“Pepper’s gonna kill us, Peter. The garlic bread is the honey, and we are simple flies.”

“You got the phrase right this time! And no, she’s going to kill you. Pepper and Natasha are gonna feed me.”

“You just ate.”

“And you know my stomach’s just a vortex. Look, I wish you the best of luck, but you and Steve both are about to see God.”

“I can handle it.” 

“Maybe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!  
> Chapter three is in the works!! :^) Pepper is in fact going to kill them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long, I’m the worst procrastinator I know 
> 
> A note for the future of this fic; I’m about 14k deep and it’s taken an angsty, hurt/comforty turn because I suck at keeping things light hearted— specific TW’s will come when shit hits the fan [next chapter] but thanks for keeping up so far!

The scent of garlic and various cooking carbs was so strong that Wanda almost forgot she was in trouble. 

Along with the smell of spices hanging thick in the air, Peter and Wanda walked into the communal floor expecting a hasty, uncomfortable silence, and instead found music flitting through the air, and the two chefs alone on the floor and in the kitchen, just swaying to the music, almost dancing.

This was the most relaxed Wanda had seen Natasha in a long time— fighting hydra stressed her out, probably more than anybody else on the team. But seeing her sway up to Pepper, movements flowing so that she looked like a winding river thanks to all that ballet, she looked so peaceful, so happy, that Pepper had more edge for once, but not by all that much.

Natasha stood on her toes and extended her back, pecking the taller, willowy woman’s cheek, and almost like nothing was wrong and they weren’t gathering to discuss the downfall of the Avengers’ press coverage, a smile spread across Pepper’s face while she looked down lovingly at Natasha in her cute apron and red lipstick.

Peter cleared his throat extremely loudly so that he could be heard over the music. “Um… Hi. What are you listening to?” He waved awkwardly, and Wanda felt like she could’ve punched him in the face for ruining such a delicate little moment, but for the first time ever, Wanda saw Natasha blush. Her ears turned a little pink and her cheeks gained a soft red hue that complemented her lipstick.

“Florence + The Machine,” Pepper said coolly. She was so calm and easy going even when Natasha was flustered— the woman had guts of steel. “How did you two’s days go?” Pepper just stepped towards the sink and started straining pasta once Natasha peeled off of her like absolutely nothing had just happened.

“Well, I ignored the Algebra packet I got before we left for break, had an iced coffee when it’s 20 degrees out, and gossiped with my favorite psychokinetic teenager, so it’s been alright,” Peter said, turning away from Pepper’s gaze like he simply couldn’t stand looking her directly in the eyes anymore while climbing into a barstool.

“Wanda?” Pepper gestured at her with a spatula while passing the drained pasta off to Natasha so she could dump it into the white sauce. 

Wanda shifted uncomfortably and cleared her throat before answering. “I slept until five in the afternoon and met Peter for coffee, so it’s just getting started, to be honest.”

Pepper just smiled and nodded, and the look Peter gave her when Pepper had her back turned, checking on the garlic bread in the oven, didn’t read as anything other than “run.” The fact that the woman hadn’t unleashed her reign of terror yet was making her blood run cold; what did Nat mean when she said Pepper was “gonna get her?”

Natasha started undoing her gray apron and turned to Wanda and Peter— while lifting it over her head, she looked down at her watch and at the elevator doors. “Five minutes. Hopefully everyone’s down here by then,” Natasha slipped past Pepper and grabbed some plates from a cabinet. “FRIDAY’s not going to be very nice about it if they’re late.”

Oh God. This was bad. 

Last time the Avengers had “family dinner,” (which wasn’t what it was, ever, Pepper just liked to offer us food while scolding us because she was the sweetest bad guy they’d ever met) the discussion was on why Bruce wasn’t allowed to call people “fucking idiots” for not vaccinating their children for polio at press conferences.

Knowing what the discussion was going to be about, some lagged behind— FRIDAY played Twisted Nerve from the Kill Bill soundtrack over and over again until everyone was on the same floor.

Thankfully, people did start trickling in. First was Thor, who looked a little bored at first, a blank expression drawn on his face— until he saw Natasha and Pepper chattering while finishing up the meal. “Oh, why hello. I see you’re teaching your shieldmaiden to cook.”

“Thor, you have no tact,” Natasha rolled her eyes and started plating the food while Pepper took the garlic bread out of the oven. As each plate had a heap of chicken alfredo dumped on top of it, the rest of the Avengers [and friends] started trickling in. 

First came Tony and Stephen, who actually portalled in from what looked like the sanctum. “Hello Ms. Potts, Ms. Romanoff,” Stephen greeted curtly— his magic cloak waved along with him. A kind smile spread across his face, and Wanda questioned when the last time was that he smiled at Tony like that. All they really ever did was bicker, in a sweet playful way of course. Up next was Bruce and Steve, who seemed to be having an animated discussion on… anarchist theory? The monopoly on violence? It seemed like both of them had a problem with the Government. 

Clint came wandering out of the elevator next, looking like he’d just woken up. Then came Vision, phasing through the floor, and then came Sam.

Pepper laid out a piece of garlic bread on the plates, each varying in size. 

This is not going to be fun. Wanda looked Vision in the eye from across the room even if they didn’t have to be in the same country to speak this way.

For you. That level of snark wasn’t needed. Just don’t look her in the eye. He was joking, of course, but Wanda was fairly sure Pepper could in fact smell fear.

“Food’s ready,” she announced, the regular levels of pink and peach in her voice, adorned with a polite smile. She put the last plate down on the counter, which had to be Peter’s; Wanda couldn’t tell by how she set it down in front of him, but how it was an absolutely massive heap of noodles.

Everyone grabbed their plates, Steve’s portion being slightly bigger than Peter’s and just as big as Thor’s and they sat around the coffee table in their usual spots on the couch. They all waited patiently to eat as Steve crossed himself like usual, and Stephen mumbled something under his breath. After everyone who had a little ritual to complete before they ate did, finally, dinner began.

As soon as she finished her second bite, Pepper’s reign terror began. “Steve, what the fuck?”

“What are we referring to?” Steve spoke with what looked like a curt smile that was blind to the terrible danger he was in.

“I think you know what you’ve done,” Pepper’s words were clipped and cold sounding, but the weirdest part about it was that her smile had this ‘there is no war in Ba Sing Se’ look to it. Completely peachy and sweet, but her eyes and voice were positively dripping with venom.

“I’ve done several things,” Steve countered. “I just don’t know which one we’re discussing.”

What was it with the blonds in the tower? The fact that Steve had the guts to look Pepper in the face right now was incredible, especially since Peter was crunching on his unusually large piece of garlic bread like it could tune out the sound of the hell we were about to raise. Clint looked almost captivated, and Vision just sat cross legged on the couch watching them go back and forth.

Instead of giving examples off the top of her head, Pepper seemed to have come prepared. She set her food down on the coffee table and pulled her phone from one of the pockets in her red maxi dress— Steve just watched where her hands went as she did so— and unlocked it.

“Saturday, 17:15: @SteveGRogers: @RichardSpencerOffical, coming from someone who was in the trenches, go fuck yourself,” Pepper read aloud. Tony just snorted, and Pepper shot a death glare at him— he just passed it off as a sneeze. “Saturday, 15:43: @SteveGRogers: @JeffBezos, please stop being the way you are.’”

“If I said it, I probably meant it,” Steve said before shoving a fork-full of pasta into his mouth. 

“Oh my god,” Stephen snorted. “Steve, you flipped the stock market upside down.”

“Billionaires can afford to bleed a little,” He shrugged.

“Cap,” Tony whined. “You can’t just break the economy via twitter. Do you know how much the property tax on this metal christmas tree is?”

Pepper just shook her head and turned to Wanda. “How could you? I thought we were friends.” She sounded like she was only half joking. 

“Okay, well— look, I didn’t think this would end with the economy tanking, but—”

“Believe it or not, this isn’t even about the economy,” Pepper announced. “The country is pretty much split down the middle.” Pepper took a bite of pasta, maybe for dramatic effect, maybe not; it did taste really good. Thor was lying when he said Nat couldn’t cook. “You, Steve Grant Rogers,” She pointed a red fingernail at him. “Are one of the very, very few things this country can agree on, because you’re the neighbor boy who fought the Nazis.”

“I’m from Brooklyn,” He shot back. “And Fascists of any kind anywhere don’t belong in a democratic society, even if we are a goddamn republic anyway.”

“Brooklyn’s being gentrified. You need to remember that our government doesn’t oppose authoritarianism. Just countries that oppose our empire.” Pepper dropped the careful look on her face that matched the rest of her fassad, her brows arching in a way that Wanda couldn’t differentiate between concern or irritation. “Your image has been cleaned up. It’s propaganda, Steve.”

“So you’re saying not everyone hates Nazis?” Steve squinted at her, but there wasn’t a trace of confusion on his face— just anger.

“America hates the idea of the fascist, just like they love the idea of you,” Pepper spread her hands, lips pressed together in admission. “And right now, you’re making America uncomfortable by not living up to it.

“I’m not gonna stop.”

“I can disable everything if you want, boss,” Tony cut in. Steve shot him the one of the most vicious glares Wanda had ever seen him give.

Pepper started laughing, and the tension in the room slowly but surely began to dissipate. “How do I always know what you’re gonna say before you say it?”

Bruce and Clint both simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief.

“Look, we don’t have the idea of you anymore. You’re a real, living person that I can’t control, and I think that may be for the better,” Pepper explained, clasping her hands together and looking around the room pensively. “This goes for the rest of you too: whatever you decide to do with your images, PR can only go so far, but I and the rest of Stark Industries are behind you.”

“So— we’re allowed to publicly wish the president would stop breathing?” Bruce asked incredulously. He looked like he already had a couple ideas brewing.

“Technically, yes. Just… try to play as nice as possible.”

“So Steve just gets away with calling the president a Jingo?” Tony asked.

Pepper shrugged while slurping up the rest of her noodles. “He’s kinda right.”

“...Jingo?” That was a new word. Wanda turned to Peter— he just shrugged.

“Jingoism: Derogatory,” Vision cut in. “extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy. Similar words include ‘Blind Patriotism,’ ‘Chauvinism,’ and ‘Belligerence.’”

“Damn right.” Steve nodded.

Dinner finished without a hitch, and everyone went along laughing and bantering until the room was cleared out, and Peter, Wanda, and Steve were the only ones left. Even if none of the Avengers had to be the one to clean the dishes, Steve still did it, as if it was a force of habit. 

The two teenagers sat in an uncomfortable silence, pretending to mind their own business while scrolling through their news feeds like they weren’t listening to Steve mumble to himself in a weird mix of Gaelic and French or passing glances at each other like they could hear one another’s thoughts.

Wanda: We should ask him about *it* 

Peter🐁: ...idk

Wanda: U can vibe on my floor  
If ur gonna pussy out

Peter🐁: dskdnjska bet.

Wanda: Really man?

Peter🐁: Mhm. I’ll be watching Back To The Future III   
Until you get back.

Wanda: That movie is shit.

Peter🐁: Exactly.

Peter stifled what looked like a fake yawn, eyes wide like he was signaling Wanda to play along. “Y’know, who woulda thought eating a pound of pasta would make you tired.” 

“You’ll be fine in like, 20 minutes.” Wanda stretched out on the couch and sat up. “You can go lay around on my floor until then, I’m gonna make sure Clint didn’t drink all of my chocolate milk.”

“Choccy milk,” Peter remarked. Steve snorted. Once Peter was in the elevator and well on his way to Wanda’s floor, Wanda tried to seem absent minded while walking over to the bar where Steve was wiping down the countertops and putting away the dishes, still quietly mumbling to himself in languages Wanda couldn’t understand, a blank expression drawn across his face.

“Hey Steve?” Alright, maybe that wasn’t the greatest start to the discussion. 

“Yeah?”

“Y’know last night? When we were talking about Don't Ask, Don't Tell and that kind of stuff?”

“...Yes?”

To Wanda, Steve looked perfectly still; frozen, like Shuri had said it: ‘and antelope in headlights.’ Slowly and carefully, like Wanda was a bear, he folded his hands on the counter in front of him, fingers curling with what was probably stress. Despite it, there was no tension in his shoulders or hardness in his gaze.

“Was the military like that in the second big war?”

Steve blinked at his hands, looking like he was trying to think of what to say. When he turned his eyes back up to Wanda, the look on his face had… changed. It seemed wrong; that shine had left the blue of his eyes and the corners of his mouth were upturned in a way that looked different from his typical grin. “The military didn’t have any discussions on that when I was in it; it wasn’t pertinent.”

That was absolute horse shit. Even Wanda knew that. “Really?”

Steve blinked, an almost eerie sad expression washing over his face. He was wringing his hands together, short clipped nails biting into the callouses that marked them, and judging by the length of the silence he’d held, he was trying to think of a perfect, neutral response that wasn’t horse shit.

“Steve, none of us are in the position to judge you, this isn’t 1943,” Wanda Started. “We can talk about it if you—”

Steve backed away like he was stepping out of the weird trance he was in, brows knit together accusingly, like Wanda was trying to get him to admit to murder. He opened his mouth, then closed it. “I’m going to Brooklyn.” That was all he said after a beat, and made a beeline for the elevator. 

Wanda leaned against the bar, retracing her steps, wondering which crack she’d stepped on. 

Wanda: He just ran away.

Peter🐁: What do you mean ran away-?

Wanda: I asked him if he wanted to talk  
About something and he said he was going  
To Brooklyn and just left.

Peter🐁: Get up here

Wanda: K one sec

Wanda stepped into the elevator while pulling up Steve’s twitter on her phone. “My floor, FRIDAY.” America’s most beloved patriot had replies were all of the -phobics. Xenophobic, transphobic, obviously racist, and homophobic. She didn’t mean of it to be this way— it was easy to forget that there were people wit an internet connection who actually hated queer people when you spent nearly every waking hour of your life surrounded by them.

The elevator doors opened, and the awful movie Peter was watching was already paused. “He went to Brooklyn?” Peter demanded.

Wanda just pulled her fingers through her hair and flopped down on her bed. “I pushed him too hard.”

“Maybe this is poorly timed,” Peter said, laying down beside her. “But you owe me $20.”

“Just because he’s into men doesn’t mean he was in love with Barnes, Peter.”

“You asked him about the military and he freaked out, though, and Barnes was a Howlie, it just makes sense.”

“You’re not getting a cent out of me unless we get the full truth, not your speculation,” Wanda sighed. “Besides. It’s probably a Catholic Guilt situation.”

“I’m getting that $20. Call me crazy, but I can… smell it. I can feel it in my bones.”

Peter and Wanda laid sprawled out across her bed watching the ceiling fan spin around and around for a few quiet minutes. Wanda scoffed. “Did you just say you can smell gay people?”

“It’s either that or I’m psychic,” Peter laughed. “I could do it before the whole radioactive spider joint.”

Wanda gave a long sigh. “I know this sounds really horrible of me, but…” Wanda blinked at the ceiling and turned her head to Peter. He craned his neck so he could look her in the eye. “I just want to take his brain apart and see everything. I can help him stop feeling like this, I just— I also can’t. But it’d be so easy if I could.”

“‘Easy’ doesn’t always mean ‘good,’” Peter advised wisely.

“I know. I haven’t done it since… since Ultron. I don’t wanna hurt anybody in that way anymore. It feels wrong. But— But—”

“You think it doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Peter sat up. “Steve doesn’t like doing things the easy way. Like, ever. My 20’s still on the table. It’ll just take a little while longer.”

“Yeah.”

Peter turned to Wanda. “You wanna help me finish this shitty movie? I wasn’t gonna be able to stomach it without you.”

“Must I?”

“You must bear witness to this stain on humanity’s record so we many never unknowingly repeat our mistakes.”

“Fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all, so this chapter ran a little longer and its not light hearted like the other chapters, so if you strictly came for good vibes and comedic genius Steve Rogers, I'm sorry I was unable to deliver that to you :^(  
> I just wanted to swing by and give you some TWs before we start because I don't want to trigger someone with this content;   
> THIS CHAPTER INCLUDES DEPICTIONS OF  
> \- Domestic abuse  
> \- Alcoholism  
> \- Homophobic language/actions  
> \- Religiously justified homophobia  
> \- Minor hint at suicide ideation (risky behavior)  
> \- Blood  
> \- Funeral Imagery  
> If you'd like to skip all that content and go straight to the comfort, scroll down to the second break.  
> If anyone has any more TW suggestions, don't be shy and put a comment! It's always welcome and extremely helpful.

For the next few days, Steve had made himself scarce. It was radio silence from his twitter, and no one had really seen him around the tower— at a normal hour, at least. Anyone who said they’d ran into him said he was either leaving, likely on his way to haunt Brooklyn, or going straight for the elevator. Probably to go and hide out on his floor.

“Wanda, I think Steve’s a little screwy in the head this week. Maybe from getting called slurs on the internet, maybe not.” Tony spoke while taking a sip of his coffee. He sat on one of the work benches that was parallel to where Wanda was sitting. Peter passed him a hunk of metal from where he was crouched beneath the desk.

“...Why do you say that?” She asked. The pieces of scrap metal she was making float around the room and dance through the air that were wrapped in a red light dropped to the ground, almost like toys she was bored of.

“Have you seen him today?” Tony almost snapped at Wanda. It sounded to her like he cared about the man he said almost every day that he wanted to deck a little more than just a little. “I know Steve’s one for fake smiles and showmanship but this is a new level. Every time I’ve seen him, he’s looked like a literal zombie.”

Peter poked his head out from under the table and looked at Wanda, trying not to make their silent conversation very obvious.

“What are you two talking about?”

It wasn’t very effective. “We weren’t talking?”

“Don’t bullshit me, kid.”

Peter sighed and shrugged. “Jig’s up.”

“Okay, basically, what happened was— well okay, um,” Wanda stumbled over every single word.

“Wanda asked Steve if he was gay and he panicked.” Peter blurted, pressing his lips together awkwardly.

“You what?”

“In our defense, we just thought he was too nervous to say something,” Wanda shot back.  
Tony dropped whatever tools were in his hands on the table with a loud clattering noise and leaned against the table, crossing his arms. Peter just crawled out from beneath it and scurried over to where Wanda was standing.

“Guys. Guys— children,” For once, Tony’s voice took on a tone of sternness. “Steve is… Pepper said it perfect at dinner the other day. Steve Rogers is— or at least was— propaganda.”

“But that’s just some made up bullshit about him though,” Peter leaned up against one of the table legs, arms crossed.

“We’re on see it to believe it basis here, Peter,” Tony said. He spoke while collecting all of the tools he’d dropped down on the table and carrying them to a metal bin full of ones that looked just like them. “You two heard me embarrassing him about his showgirl days, the only reason he picked that shield up in the first place was in ‘41 when he went AWOL looking for James Barnes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tony gave a frustrated groan and stopped where he was standing, dropping a wrench and three different hammers in the bin on the floor. “You two little— It means,” He heaved a big sigh. “That it takes a lot to get Steve to do something he doesn’t want to. And judging by how quiet he’s been about the whole gay rights thing, a lot was done.”

“So…?”

“So he’s traumatized by being queer during World War Two, Wanda— Look, I’m just as nosey and headstrong as you two are, and I’ve done the exact same thing. It didn’t work out. In fact—” Tony kicked the boxes under a shelf. “FRIDAY, what’s Steve up to.”

“Sulking,” The automated voice said matter of factly.

Sulking? Wanda wasn’t really sure if she’d ever seen Steve do that before. That made her feel extra awful, if anything— maybe she did break Steve.

Tony sighed, and leaned back against the table Peter had crawled out from, combing his fingers through his hair and shrugging like he didn’t have much else to say. “Look, Capsicle’s as friendly as the next guy, but trying to figure out the things he doesn’t want you to know— it’s a dead end.”

“I need to fix this,” Wanda decided. She hopped down from the work table she was sat on and made for the elevator.

“Wait, hold on—” Peter stood up, waving his arms frantically. “I mean this in the kindest way possible, but don’t you think you’ve done enough? Or— or we, I guess I could say?”

Wanda was already standing in the elevator by the time Peter had asked. “I should at least… check on him, right?” She turned to Tony, who just shrugged. Why the hell not then? The doors slid closed. “FRIDAY, take me up to Steve’s floor.”

“Captain Rogers has barricaded himself on his floor.” FRIDAY was apparently just as sarcastic as Jarvis was, according to Tony, but Wanda found it more believable that she was more sarcastic.

“FRIDAY, you know I can take this metal box off the tracks and just get up there myself,” Wanda tapped her knuckles against the wall of the elevator— the hollow sound of her fist hitting the metal was more than satisfying. “I want to talk to Steve.”

“You think he’ll talk to you?”

Way too much snark for an AI. Tony needed to stop modeling his machines to be completely useless or too intelligent, it was off putting, “I’ll figure that out as I go.”

FRIDAY hesitated in what would have been a sigh if she had lungs. “Fine.”

“Thank you.” Wanda leaned against the wall while waiting for the elevator to stop at Steve’s floor.

When the elevator doors opened, the floor Wanda was on was a huge contrast between the fluorescent lights of the elevator; Steve had all of the lights off, and the only reason why Wanda could see was the city lights that were peeking in through the hastily drawn curtains that looked like he’d simply given up on closing them halfway through.

“Steve?” Wanda took a few careful steps into the darkness, eyes flicking back and forth like she was halfway expecting something or someone to jump out and scare her. “Vis— Tony wanted to know if you were hungry.”

Wanda turned the corner and saw a pale light casting across the wall, along with voices that sounded like they were coming from a screen. Wanda peeked her head around the corner and saw Steve, seated on the floor with his back against his couch working a tangle toy in his hands. He had this placid stare on his face, mouthing the words to whatever he was watching, as if he’d seen it so many times that he had the script memorized.

“Tony could’ve asked FRIDAY to carry the message,” Steve said without taking his eyes off the screen.

“You got me,” Wanda said, voice quiet. She gave a halfhearted shrug in admission and stepped out from behind the wall where she was hiding and hovered over Steve, waiting for him to acknowledge her. When he didn’t, she just sat down on the rug beside him. “What are you watching?”

Steve let the question hang in the air unanswered, staring up at the interview of Peggy Carter. She was saying something about Steve mowing down Hydra Blockades in France during one of her most brutal winters in service.

“What you did back then was really brave,” Wanda supplied. “You were really strong to just keep going.”

Steve’s silence didn’t hold up as well this time around. “I was angry,” He admitted, setting the tangle toy on the ground and lacing his fingers together. “All that time tearing through France, Poland, Germany— I was doing it out of anger. I wanted to kill Schmidt myself.” A heavy silence passed between them while Steve was nearly pulling the tangle toy apart. He looked like he was swallowing something bitter before he spoke again. He grimaced with disgust. “He deserved worse than what he got.”

“Yeah.”

“May he burn forever in the fires of hell—” Steve quieted immediately when the video riel showed him and Barnes leaned over a map that was spread across the table, sticking red pins in it. There were handguns and rifles and rations laid out where they’d be safe. Steve’s shield was laid out in the snow, and what seemed to be Barnes’ sniper rifle was sat on top of it.

Peggy’s voice came over the photos of James and Steve scheming together: That Winter turned out to be several times more grueling after Bucky had died. He was possibly the most skilled sharpshooter I’d ever met, and just about as strong as an ox. But more importantly, he boosted morale while tearing through Hydra encampments, including mine. The documentary cut back to Peggy, who was sniffling. She paused for a beat, and someone offscreen handed her a tissue. She took it. The War had just started finishing up, taking a turn for the best but… Steve’s health had taken a turn for the worst.

A video of Steve and Barnes grabbing their weapons and trading dog tags while bantering came up as she spoke. Someone else’s voice cut in. His health?

He seemed to have gone mad, I mean. There were… too many near death experiences for it to be a coincidence. He’d become even more reckless than he already was. I’m afraid to say that he… he should have been discharged for medical reasons in ‘43, but he was helping pull the war to a close. Steve was invaluable to the effort.

Steve got up from where the two were sitting when a video of him and James standing and laughing together came on screen. They both had devilish grins and were rolling their eyes, probably teasing one another. He looked… captivated as he took a few careful steps closer and closer to the screen. Whatever Agent Carter was saying seemed to be silenced, drowned out. Steve stretched his fingers, and his hand hovered over where Barnes’ chest was. He just heaved a big sigh and touched his hand to the screen, lowering his head.

“What I did wasn’t good and right,” Steve said. He sounded a little choked up. “I only fought to raise hell and wreak havoc. I was a monster.”

Wanda got up from where she was sitting and stood beside Steve. “Your intentions don’t have to be perfect to do a good thing, you know,” Wanda said. “Good things are always coming out of mistakes.”

He just shook his head. Didn’t say anything or look her in the eye.

“Let me help you,” Wanda coaxed. She extended a hand that was enveloped in red light. “We can do this together.” Steve looked down at Wanda’s hand, then up at her, then down at her hand again.

With nothing other than haste in his eyes, he took her hand.

Steve was sat under a table with his knees pulled up to his chest. He looked young. Small and thin with delicate bones and eyes that had an innocent light in them. There were no calluses on his hands, and no battle scars marked his skin.

Wanda sat beside him beneath the table, waiting patiently. There was no way for her to be acknowledged in these dreams, no way for her to make whatever was happening stop unless she decided to pull the plug. Wanda was nothing other than a spectator, and Steve was only dimly aware that she was watching. 

Steve jumped, then winced when he heard something crash in the next room. The tiny apartment had glass strewn across the floor, some of it a translucent brown, some of it white like China. 

In his soft hands was a picture frame— there was a photograph of the tiniest Steve Wanda had seen yet, infant Steve in his mother’s arms, and his father stood beside her. Again, he jumped at the sound of something shattering, but didn’t move when screaming could be heard coming from behind the closed door. He just started singing to himself in Gaelic in a choked, quiet voice as if his singing could take him to his own little world and help him tune everything out.

The picture frame he was holding in his hands was shattered, maybe from being stepped on. Maybe it’d been thrown too, but either way, the photo was sliding out; the boy sat beside Wanda just folded twice and shoved it in one of his pockets.

“My son’s a goddamned pansy! All of Brooklyn knows he’s a fairy, and it’s your fuckin’ fault!” A man shouted. Kid-Steve just stayed under the table, singing a little louder and rocking himself like he could silence everyone and everything in the world if he sang loud enough or focused hard enough.

“You don’t get to say that! You don’t get to call my child that and say he’s your son, you bastard!” Something slammed into the wall, maybe, hopefully a shoe. “Dammit, Joseph! Damn you!” The woman’s screams were murderous, and they razed her throat as she cussed up a storm like she was ready to kill the man she was damning. “You stay away from my boy!”

The door was thrown open, and a man came out of it with a woman hitting his shoulders and kicking the back of his legs, looking just about ready to bite him given the chance. It made sense where Steve got all that fight in him from.

Joseph came stomping around the room, head snapping side to side to side. He looked mad as a bull when his eyes finally landed on Steve, who was still under the table. Joseph grabbed Steve by his tiny arm and started dragging him towards the kitchen while his mother ran back to the room they’d just had their screaming match in like she was looking for something.

Steve didn’t fight back as hard as his mother. He looked mortified, eyes huge as just pulled at his arm in hopes that his father would just give up and let him go. Joseph held Steve in place while reaching around the kitchen counters blindly for something.

“My only son!” He boomed. “A fucking faggot!”

As Steve’s mom came running out from behind the door with a wooden broomstick in her hands, the front door had swung open. Joseph was too preoccupied with yelling at Steve to notice his wife creeping up on him or the boy who’d come barreling inside, eyes wide at what he’d walked into.

Sarah and the dark haired boy looked at one another, and Sarah tipped her head at the glass that was sprawled out on the ground. The boy nodded, and there was a pause in silent agreement while the boy groped at the air, taking a big breath like he was about to do something stupid.

The boy scooped a piece of broken glass up from the ground and steadied his breathing, eyes flicking around the apartment with amazement. Digging his heels in the ground, he didn’t waste any more of the little time there was left and charged, reaching past Steve, slashing Joseph’s forearm with it and freeing his friend.

Blood got everywhere; the tile, the counter, even on Steve, and as soon as Joseph realized what had happened, Steve and the other boy were already running, and Sarah Rogers had slammed him in the back with the broomstick to buy them more time.

Wanda followed the children out of the house. It seemed like they were running to nowhere in particular, but Steve was already struggling to keep up. They stopped in an alleyway, and the second Steve was paused, sat on the ground in complete silence, he burst into tears. 

“Bucky, I left ma. I just left her there,” Steve cried. His voice was thick with tears, and as his shoulder shook and his hands trembled, Bucky just pulled him closer and held him.

“She wanted you to leave to protect you. I’m sorry Stevie, I really am.”

“I have to go back, now—” Steve got to his feet and started walking back the way he came, hands and shirt reddened with his father’s blood. 

Bucky got up from where he was kneeled on the ground, his hand falling on the shorter boy’s shoulder “No.” The way he pronounced the single syllable had more conviction than she’d ever heard from a child his age. 

Steve looked at him like he’d just been kicked. “I’m not gonna leave her there.” His eyes were reddened and filled with tears, and this child, this boy that couldn’t be any older than 10 looked just about as stubborn as Captain America, if not more.

“You’re not leaving her,” Bucky reasoned. “We just need to go somewhere safe until your old man calms down a little, and then we’ll go back and we can clean everything up. I’ll help you.”

Steve looked both ways; where Bucky was trying to push him to and where they’d come from, and wiping the tears out of his eyes, he just shrugged. “Fine.”

So the pair walked up the street rather than down, hand and hand as the sun was sinking towards the horizon with Wanda on their trail. After walking in silence for a few minutes, Steve turned to Bucky, who had this sad look on his face. “Thanks, Bucky.”

“Don’t even mention it,” He said quietly while turning the corner. A giant church with white walls and stained glass windows came into view on the other side of the street. It’s sign read St. Catherine’s 1st Catholic Church. “You’d have done something crazier for me.”

While Bucky and Steve got closer and closer to the church, the dream… skipped. Darkness washed over the entire world, and the sky turned scarlet red, and when the sun was back, Bucky was gone. Steve stopped and turned around. He looked directly at Wanda. 

At first, she thought he was looking through her. But he was indeed glaring at her in the eyes, shaking with what seemed to be panic.

Wanda froze. He wasn’t supposed to know she was there to the point in which he could look at her and break the dream, especially if he was in the mind of a child. But apparently, Steve could do whatever he wanted.

He just shook his head.

“You were going to the church?” Wanda asked, kneeling so that she’d be at eye level with him. Steve nodded. “You’re scared,” she realized aloud. “I can make it all stop now if you want me to.”

Steve looked at the church, stood on the street, hesitating.

“Look,” Wanda held her hands out, palms up, a storm of red light dancing in her hands. A metal whistle appeared in her hands, and she held it out to Steve. “If you want it to stop, just blow this whistle and I’ll wake us up. Okay?”

“Okay.” Steve turned and started making his way towards the church, hand closed around the whistle.

Wanda followed him inside, and the second he passed through the door frame, Steve suddenly wasn’t a child anymore. He was taller and just about as thin. At the head of the room, there was an altar lined with candles, and a statue of Christ nailed to a cross was on the wall. The wooden pews were arched towards the altar.

Steve looked like a deer in headlights, his feet planted to the dusty wooden floorboards. His eyes were wide, stuck on the statue of christ. Wanda’s heart started skipping beats, and a pressure sat on top of her chest like all the blood was forcing its way through her heart. 

“Steve, we should go,” Wanda coaxed, taking a few careful steps towards him. Steve dropped to his knees, looking around above his head. His breaths were half caught in his chest, coming out jagged and awkwardly. Panicking. “Hey, it’s okay. We don’t have to be here anymore—” Bright red light filled into her palms again, and she made a cutting motion through the air. The room went dark for a split second, as though the sky had gone dark and the candles had went out.

“No!” Steve’s voice echoed throughout the darkness of the church. He razed his own throat screaming, and just before Wanda could fully break off the connection and put the nightmare to a stop, the candles flicked back on and all that could be seen was a young, doe eyed version of Steve on his knees with tears streaming down the side of his face. 

“Steve, you need to let go,” This was bad. This was very bad. Abovehead, Wanda could hear flapping wings, like birds were hiding in the rafters. A dove came down from the ceiling and slashed Steve across the face with its claws. Steve tried to cover his face with his two thin arms, but more of the birds came down from the ceiling and started slicing his skin open.

When they seemed done with him, the birds flocked towards the altar. The candles went out again, and all that could be heard in the terrifying silence was the sound of Steve’s panting and sobbing. Steve shouldn’t have been able to keep both of them trapped here.

“Heathen.” A dry, gravely voice pierced through the silence from the altar, and the candles came back on. A priest was glaring him in the low light. Steve fell backwards in terror at the sight of him. The priest just stepped down the altar in pursuit of him. “Degenerate.”

Steve stumbled backwards down the aisle like his legs had failed him. The priest leaned down and grabbed Steve by the forearm and yanked him to his feet. “You’re disgusting.” Steve yanked his arm away from the man’s grip, and the priest’s hand whipped across his face. 

Steve fell to the ground and covered his bloodied face. “Stop, please,” he pleaded weakly.

The candles went out, and the scent of smoke whipped through the air with a silent promise that they’d never come back on, and the last Wanda saw of Steve before they had was the sight of him with his arm raised, hand stuck out like he could somehow stop what would happen.

Wanda clapped her hands together, crimson light dancing in her palms. “Leave him alone!” Wanda shouted. She ran to Steve and kneeled beside him. The priest and the other doves were consumed by red light, along with the sight of the church, and it was all gone. But sat in the perfect darkness of, well, nothing, teenager Steve and Wanda were beside one another.

The darkness swallowed the two of them completely, and the sun moved overhead again, this time behind the veil of gray clouds. Wanda wiped away the tears from her eyes and touched her hands to the ground. Soft grass that was slick with rain was beneath her hands. She looked up and found Steve, full grown Steve at that, standing beside her.

He wore a fully black suit, and standing still as a statue, holding an umbrella. “There’s enough space for both of us.” Steve turned to Wanda and held the umbrella her way so that some of the rain fell down on him. Wanda looked down at herself; she was wearing a black dress with lace cascading down the arms.

“What the hell, Steve?” Wanda coughed and climbed to her feet, pushing her dress down past her knees.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t— I—”

“No, no it’s not your fault, I just—” She stood beside Steve so they could share his umbrella. “You shouldn’t be able to see me. Or decide what I’m going to wear.”

Steve stood with the silence between them before speaking again. “Sorry, it wasn’t on purpose, it’s just—” Steve nodded towards the plot of land between them. “A respect thing, I guess.”

A rectangular, uneven pile of dirt with a headstone at the top of it sat before them. “Oh.”

“We don’t have to be here anymore,” Wanda said.

Steve gave a sigh, not taking his eyes off of the grave. “We got him a headstone, and a plot of land next to his ma,” he started. “But the casket’s empty.” Steve looked down at his shoes that had been soiled with graveyard dirt and shut his eyes. “I let him die and couldn’t even get him to his own funeral.”

“Pietro always reminded me that funerals were for the living,” Wanda said. “I think James forgives you.”

“Putting a coffin in the ground with his uniform in it didn’t make me feel any better.”

“You loved him, didn’t you.”

“So much.” The rain kept on for a while longer while Steve’s stayed staring at his shoes. “And I know, I know he probably forgives me, but I— miss him too much to forgive myself. I’ll have to tell him that myself one day.”

Wanda snapped her fingers, and a white haze of snow fell down from the sky and coated the earth.

“Germany.” Steve breathed.

“Hey, Punk.” Steve whipped around as soon as he heard the sound of the other man’s voice. James Barnes stood wearing the blue jacket that Wanda had seen in that museum. His smile was crooked, teeth glinting like pearls, and despite all the sadness and anger and hurt radiating off Steve, Barnes was miraculously happy. “What’s with the long face?”

Steve rushed him. Wrapped his arms around him and held him like if he blinked hard enough, the man would disappear into the snow again and their moment would be over. James just hugged him back and pulled his fingers through Steve’s blond hair, resting his chin on his shoulder. “Hey, no need to crush me— I’m right here Steve. I’m here.”

Except he wasn’t— Wanda had brought back the memory of him with the snap of her fingers, what she knew Steve wished he could see. But this version of him wasn’t her puppet, and she wouldn’t do something like that to Steve; it was cruel to give him that and take it away.

So… why did he seem so genuine? So real?

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry—” Steve sounded like he was begging someone for forgiveness, and it didn’t seem like he was asking Barnes for it, even if he was holding onto him like he’d never let go.

“Stevie, look at me,” Barnes held Steve’s face in his hands, and they locked eyes.

Stevie, huh? Shit. Wanda noted.

“This— this isn’t your fault. What’s happened to me isn’t your fault. I was the idiot this time.” James was crying too, his voice wavering despite the smile spread across his lips. “I did it because I love you, and you’re not gonna blame yourself for it. Got it, punk?”

Steve nodded. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. Hey,” James said. “Don’t do anything stupid ‘til I get back, alright?” He planted a kiss on Steve’s forehead, and the wind and snow overtook the world around them, and everyone was buried in it.

Wanda’s palm felt like it was burning. 

She sat up from where she was sitting with her back against the couch, choking on what tasted like… like metal, like blood. Holy shit. Her fingertips came away slick with blood and tears when she touched just beneath her nose. And to make matters worse, her throat hurt like hell, and her ears were ringing, and she couldn’t fucking breathe.  
A big hand touched her shoulder, and she was tossed back into reality. Turns out, it's a bit hard to breathe when you’re screaming and crying. Wanda’s bloodshot eyes flicked open to the sight of Steve kneeling beside her. “Look at me— You need to catch your breath, okay?”

Eventually, her screams broke into choked sobs, and her sobbing was reduced to quiet tears. Whenever she tried to do this, it immediately went to hell. Pietro was right to get her to retire the skill, it always went wrong. Nothing good for any of the participants ever came out of it, and every time, it was a mistake. 

“I’m so sorry kid. I didn’t mean to do that to you,” Steve looked mortified. His skin was paled and there was something grief stricken in his eyes, like he’d committed something as heinous as murder. “That was horrible, and I kept you there. I’m so—”

“It’s not your fault.” Wanda said. There was a certain finality to her voice, like she had finally accepted that fact for herself. “None of it. You’re a good person, you know that, right?”

Steve broke eye contact like he couldn’t bear to hear her say that to him. Like he disagreed.

“You didn’t deserve any of that, you just got hurt.” Wanda spread her hands out in front of her like she had something to offer other than a half baked explanation and tears. “Tomorrow. You should talk to Sam tomorrow. Okay?”

Steve’s brows pinched together in worry. Of course he didn’t want to talk to Sam about this, but it was the best they could do; it was better than getting Fury to grab Steve by the scruff and get him to do as told. He’d just go into hiding again.

“Sam’s one of the sweetest people we know,” Wanda pressed. “He won’t judge you.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.” Steve said quietly, refusing to look up from the tile he’d decided to focus on.

Wanda Steve's giant hand in hers. “Caring about someone means you help pull some of one anothers’ weight, that’s what my Tato said,” she leaned into Steve and gave him what at least only resembled a bear hug due to size difference. “We care about you, Steve. And you care about us. Please.”

After a moment’s worth of hesitation, Steve hugged the younger Avenger back. He took a shuddering breath and only said one word: “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you for reading!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all I am so sorry this has taken me so long and this chapter is so short-- I'm way too easily distracted, as you may be able to tell by now. Thank you so much for coming back, it means the world; I'll try to crank out an extra long chapter for y'all to make up for it :^)

“But I can’t talk to dead people— at least, I don’t think? If I could have I would have— not the point,” Wanda reasoned. Stephen worked his hands together like he was thinking it over while she spoke, and Vision followed suit but holding perfectly still. And Loki— Loki in his own special way looked amused, but unfortunately [fortunately] said nothing. “— The point is that during the dream, Sergeant Barnes seemed… real.”

“Elaborate on real,” Vision was always the slowest among them to pass judgement.

Wanda sighed and sank into Stephen’s loveseat, passing her gaze over the sanctum’s library like the words she was searching for would float off the pages, into the low light, and show themselves to her.

“Like… just genuine,” She couldn’t do much more than reestablish, reiterate. “I came to screaming. We were both terrified and sad, and… and everyone else in his memories were too until we went to Germany and I reminded him of James. He felt real because nobody else there was like him. Happy, I mean.”

A silence swept over the group while Stephen and Vision thought about what she’d explained— Wanda herself couldn’t paint him with that much realism or make him that responsive or sugarcoat whatever Steve would think in that moment; she’d never met Barnes before.

“So it is an anomaly,” Vision announced. “Can’t you speak with the dead, doctor?”

“She doesn’t know how,” Stephen gestured towards Wanda. “But… well, Wanda, your powers are a part of you, so… maybe they can change over time.”

“Like mine. Or Doctor Banner’s.” Vision nodded.

Wanda shook her head. “I’ve tried to call people back from the grave. They’re only strong memories when I use my powers.”

“But what if it’s different now?” Stephen pressed. Loki giggled and crossed his legs. Stephen turned towards him, only for Loki to say nothing. 

“The Wakandans can speak with their ancestors after they’ve died, so maybe—“

“I didn’t know him.”

Loki giggled again, arms crossed.

“I’m sorry, do you have something to contribute, or-?”

Loki shook his head. “Magician, have you learned nothing since our last meeting?”

Stephen rolled his eyes. He wasn’t a magician and hated being called that, but it was generally understood that Loki was a bitch, and it simply do be like that sometimes.

“The child can’t speak to the dead. That’s a learned skill, and she hasn’t practiced. I think the answer to our question is fairly obvious.”

The room fell silent again while Stephen and Vision tried to catch up with Loki. Wanda just looked between the three of them, shuddering. Stephen really needed to calm down with the A/C in the sanctum… if they even had one? Maybe it was some wizard shit, but either way, not everyone walked around with a magical cape.

Vision turned to Wanda. “Are you ill?”

Stephen squinted and looked Wanda up and down, and Wanda didn’t really know what to say. She took her meds, she ate, and she slept. That was the perfect trifecta, according to Sam (and literally everyone else whether they had a degree or not.) “Maybe?”

“Oh yes, what I’m suggesting would indeed make her fall ill. You humans are rather fragile.”

“Remind me why I like you at all,” Stephen shot a glare at Loki and stood from his armchair, taking off one of his gloves. Wanda looked up at his shaking hands and down at his bright red magic blanket. If anything she was jealous. “May I?”

Wanda just nodded.

Stephen placed a hand on her forehead and pulled it away almost immediately. “Alright Odinson, what is it?”

“You all lack tact.”

“Well judging by this child’s temperature,” Stephen snapped, placing extra emphasis on “child” and seeding more venom into his death glare, “We have more pressing matters than clever conversation. Spill. Vision, call Bruce.”

“Of course,” Vision nodded, wandering away from where everyone was seated.

“Sergeant Barnes isn’t dead.” Loki rolled his eyes.

“How so?”

“Wanda said it herself, she never knew him. Captain Rogers wouldn’t be able to construct that image of him either, the only thing we can assume is that she formed a bridge between him and Steve.” Loki explained. “Finding him and then putting that much energy into communication is a surefire way to get sick. Maybe die, but, you know. You Avengers can be rather stubborn.”

Wanda set her head down on the cushion beside her. Of course this was happening. She was starting to think all that backlash from fooling around in other people’s brains was God’s punishment for outright defying the laws of nature. And to make matters worse, how the fuck was she going to explain that Steve’s boyfriend was actually alive because she had a feeling and Loki, the trickster god of all people, said so? And how was she gonna run Peter his money when she had no cash? 

“So how are we supposed to find him?” Wanda mumbled. A blanket would be really, really nice right now. Maybe she could ask Stephen for her coat back, but she didn’t think he’d give it to her.

“Lay down— Do what now?” Stephen asked while taking off his cloak. 

“I mean how are we gonna find Bucky?” Wanda did as she was told and silently rejoiced when Stephen set the giant cloak on her. 

“That’s probably the least of our problems, Wanda.” Stephen said. “Loki, I need a green, leatherbound book, third case top shelf, it should be the only one there that looks like that—”

“I’m not your dog—”

“Do you wanna stay with the kid while I go find it?”

Loki sighed. “Fine.”

“He survived a fall off a mountain, we should at least look into it,” Wanda urged. She didn’t know if anyone else agreed, but this seemed like a it-comes-back-and-bites-you-in-the-ass type of thing [again, Tony.] “And— and Steve loves him. We should do it for Steve at least.” Wanda half whispered.

“To be honest, Wanda,” Stephen kneeled so that they were eye to eye. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

“But Loki wouldn’t lie to us about it— there’s no point.”

“I guess I just find it hard to believe that an adult man survived falling off a mountain from a moving train into the snow, and then proceeded to live his life for another 70 years.” Stephen said quietly.

“You’re literally a Wizard, Stephen.”

“--Sorcerer. And I’ll look into it, but I can’t promise you Loki is right.”

I nodded, fading into the inky black pit of sleep and sinking into nothingness.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I know I suck at updating regularly, between the whole adhd and school thing, but I'm trying my best!! thank you to everyone who keeps coming back, sometimes you just need a little push to keep writing! enjoy the chapter <3

The thing about having psychic powers is that you don’t really know when you’re having a weird fever dream, or a not so fun prophetic dream, or just a regular dream. It’d always been hard for Wanda to tell because there were nightmares too. Hopes that she could speak with the dead, and the creeping suspicion that she wasn’t necessarily done grieving.

So when she woke up laid out on a frigid concrete floor, staring up at a ceiling that had literal icicles hanging from it, she assumed at first that it was just some weird fever dream— it made sense. The cold that seeped into her bones wasn’t all that different from the one she was met with when she was in the sanctum.

“LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE!” Wanda propped herself up on one shoulder and twisted around at the voice. It sounded… familiar? Maybe? It was James— but not? He looked… different now. He stood with his hands gripped around silvery bars, a mess of shoulder length brown hair hanging in his pale face “NEXT CHANCE I GET, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” He roared.

His palm slammed into the metal bar, and the sound that rang through the air seemed more like iron hitting iron instead of a hand ramming into the bars. James’ left hand wasn’t… It wasn’t real. Or maybe it was? Encased in metal? He fell back against the concrete wall of the cell we were in, all the air forced from his chest, and slid down to the ground, holding his head in his hands and pulling his fingers through his hair.

His breath came out shuddering and steaming, and he shivered in the awful biting cold, darkness, and isolation feeling more hopeless than anything else as the panicked anger started to fizzle out.

So Wanda climbed to her feet, struggling to get the ground solid and sure beneath her. When she was finally upright, James casted his eyes upwards and saw her. Freezing and shivering along with him in what he had assumed to be solitary. 

“Hey— you’re that kid—“ James looked down at his palms, then back up at Wanda, then down at his palms again. “And this— this is a dream, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. How do you?”

“Look at your palms,” he instructed, pushing himself up from the concrete floor. “They look a little strange, don’t they?” 

Wanda did as told: the lines marking her hands were weird looking— indistinct and light. “Shit, you’re right.” Wanda looked back up at James. His hair hung low in his face, skin marked with small cuts. His eyes had ceased to shine. “Are you real?”

“What?”

“I mean am I making you up?”

James looked around at the cell, down at his metal arm— he grabbed a fist full of his hair and tugged on it. “I feel pretty real. Whatever that means… how do I know you’re real?”

“I guess we’ll just have to take each other’s word for it.” Wanda let out a huff and combed her fingers through her hair. “Look, I don’t know how long this weird dream thing is gonna hold out, and this is a weird question but… are you alive?”

“If we were dead and this was the afterlife, I’d be pissed,” James shrugged. “Yeah, last time I checked.”

“Oh shit, you’re right this place sucks.” Wanda shivered and held her hands together, a crimson glow collecting between them. She smacked her hands together, and everything changed. The icicles hanging from the ceiling disappeared, and light poured into the dream. The air wasn’t frigid anymore either, which was a plus. 

James looked around at the fields she had brought them to— rolling hills of green grass, flowers, and nothingness. It was hard to tell where the earth collided with the perfectly blue sky, and the open space seemed to go on forever. James got stuck staring at the sky as if it was the most beautiful and confusing thing he’s ever seen. “Holy shit.”

He flopped down in the grass, arms bracing over his chest as he just stared in wonder, wide eyed. Wanda laid in the grass beside him. “It took a while for me to learn to get the sky right. It normally looks like a drawing, y’know?”

James held his palms up and glared at them again, staring at a hand welded in metal and one made of human skin and bone. “Thank you.”

Wanda didn’t say anything back, just nodded. “So… if you’re alive, how? And where are you?”

A crease struck in the man’s brow, as if he had to retrace his steps and figure out the answers to both of those questions. “How am I alive?” He mumbled to himself. He shook his head. “Why do you ask?”

“What do you know? Like what’s your name? How old are you?”

He didn’t know the answers to those questions either. “I’m sorry. I don’t— I don’t know.” He started to look sad, a grimace spreading across his face.

“Hey, maybe it's just the dream messing with your head— You’re James Barnes, you were a howling commando in the second World War,” Wanda pushed. “You were their sniper, a really good one.”

“James.” He worked the name over in his head like it was a word he’d never heard before. “Doesn’t sound right. You sure you got the right guy, kid?”

“I’m positive, y’know, if you’re even real.” Wanda wringed her fingers together. This didn’t make any sense; dreams were weird, obviously, but normally you’d remember your own name in them, and why wouldn't he know his name if Wanda knew it? He had to be real.

“Bucky,” he spat out. Sitting up from where he laid, he turned to Wanda. “My name’s Bucky.”

Almost like it was a magic word, the space between Wanda and Bucky grew in the blink of an eye; a wide stretch of grassy field emerging from nothing. “The bridge, it’s breaking—” red light collected around Wanda’s hands. Her head snapped back and forth as the wildflower decorated hills started to crumble and vaporize into crimson dust and fall into the nothingness of an inky black pit. 

Bright red light poured from her hands, anchoring the hill they stood on into one place. “Where are you?” She shouted.

Bucky leaped from where he stood, a hole going nowhere opening up from where he stood. Wanda strained to seed it closed as the world around them kept crumbling. Bucky was at a loss for words, mouth agape like he couldn’t figure out where his body was.

“I— I don’t know!”

“Think! I just need a clue— a continent, a sign, something!”

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, trying to recall anything that could remind him— the icicles on the ceiling. The bitter cold. The massive bear dogs… bear dogs. “Russia!”

Where Bucky was standing crumbled to dust, and Wanda dove, sliding on her stomach to the very edge of the drop off, catching him just by the wrist, all while holding what was left of the cliff in their false reality. He looked down at the endless black pit he was hanging above, and looked back at Wanda, breath rushing in and out of his chest in a fit of panic.

“I’m sorry,” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she gripped Bucky’s wrist a little tighter. “I can’t hold it, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, kid— listen,” Bucky fought through panicked gasps for air as his wrist slipped out of Wanda’s grasp, and they were hand in hand. He refused to look down at the darkness below him, locking eyes with Wanda. “Send Steve my best— tell that clown I love him and that I’m still alive.”

“I will, I promise.”

“And find me! Remember, Russia!”

Bucky slipped from Wanda’s grasp, and he fell into the endless pit.

Wanda shot upwards in bed, covers sliding off of her skin and exposing her to frigid air. Her head snapped from side to side like she was looking for something, jaw dropped in awe.

Hospital, hospital. “Hospital— no, medical wing,” she whispered to herself. “Manhattan.”

She combed her fingers through her hair, blinking hard at the golden light flowing through the giant window that overlooked Manhattan. Cars streamed through busy intersections, looking a little like worker ants from where Wanda was sitting.

Her head snapped to the right, and as she started examining the IV in her arm.

“Please, don’t touch that.” Stephen practically materialized in the room beside Bruce, hands carefully folded in front of him. “It’s just saline.”

“He’s alive,” she blurted out. Wanda felt like if she said the dream aloud, it’d stick longer. Bruce looked at Stephen, who just gestured for her to explain. “Bucky— James Barnes, he’s alive.”

“How do you know?”

“Where’s Steve?” Wanda threw the blankets off of her legs and took a precarious step out of bed. “I need to tell Steve— and Nat. Is Peter here too?” Her legs shook, but she kept on, grabbing onto the IV pole for support.

“Wanda, you’re still sick,” Bruce scrambled in front of her, holding his hands out to steady or stop her. “Really, really sick. Like a bedridden kind, sit down.”

“I need to talk to Steve. I need to tell him everything—“

“If you sit down, I will bring the three of them to you,” Stephen resolved. 

“Okay.” Wanda did as told and sat, folding her legs and waiting semi-patiently. “fine. Please be quick.” Stephen breathed a sigh of relief and walked out of the hospital room, hopefully to go find Steve.

When Stephen left the room, Bruce pulled his hands from his pickets and stalked over to Wanda’s bed, sitting on the edge.

“Give it to me straight, doc.”

“To be honest, I feel like I have no idea what I am doing,” Bruce said, wringing his hands together and staring at the floor. “You’re going to live, though. Promise.”

“How’d I even get here?”

“Well. Okay, basically, Stephen says you fell asleep on his couch and just didn’t wake up. So then he panicked, and—”

“Stephen panicked?”

“I mean, yeah— you didn’t wake up, Wanda. That’s really bad.”

“I wish I was awake to see that.”

“You and Peter have really bad priorities. Anyway he portalled you in here and we both got to work making sure you didn’t die, but I wasn’t sure what I’m doing and I’m not sure I am now.” A silence passed between the two, Wanda wringing her hands on the blanket she was beneath. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she tried to remember what Bucky had said to her. Where he was— more importantly what his dream looked like.

“You okay there kid?” Bruce interjected— which was understandable; there had to be a maximum of three Avengers that were okay with being locked up in the medical wing.

“Yeah, I— I had a really weird dream,” She started. She gritted her teeth together like she was working up the nerve to say what was on her mind. “So… Steve and James?”

“What about them?” Bruce sounded like he was choosing his words carefully, like Wanda was insinuating something… like there was a not so mutual understanding between the two.

“I just— well, James said—”

“What do you mean he said?”

“It’s a long story.

“I have time.”

Wanda sighed. “It’s pretty weird, I can’t lie.”

“We all are.” One of Bruce’s calloused hands fell down on Wanda’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“Alright, so, basically— you know how I can see inside people’s heads?”

“How on earth could I forget?”

“Well, what happened was I kinda… went in Steve’s.”

“Wanda,” Bruce snapped. He looked appalled. If he were anymore animated he’d look like he was clutching pearls. “You know you can’t—”

“I asked first,” She reassured quickly. “It’s okay, I asked first.”

Bruce’s shoulders relaxed, and he nodded. “I’m sorry— okay. Well, that’s a little better but you know it’s not safe to do that.”

“I know, I just… I just thought I could do something good with it for once. Sorry.” She shrugged. A silence passed between them. No sign of Stephen. Hopefully he wouldn’t portal in when Wanda was mid sentence.

“What happened? … If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Right. Well—” Wanda tried to piece together what to say without fully exposing Steve. True, he was a lover as much as he was a fighter. But the reciprocation… having someone love you back just as much, letting someone know whether you crossed your T’s or dotted your I’s first seemed hard for him. The reasons why were fairly obvious now. “Basically, in the dream I called on James, and he was supposed to be fake, but he seemed weirdly real. And I went to go discuss with Stephen because I don’t talk to dead people, it just doesn't work for me, but he still felt real. So then I just had a dream where I was talking to James again. And we didn’t know if we were both alive or real but he told me where to look for him. He’s… he’s in Russia, I think. Probably. Seemed like Siberia, actually. Do you have a pen and paper? Wait. Where’s my phone?”

Bruce just stared at Wanda, dumbfounded and unsure of what to say. He stood up and shook his hands like he was flicking water off of them, and pulled his fingers through his hair. “Jesus Christ.”

“What?”

“I just realized that I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing,” He laughed. “But you know what? Cho wouldn’t either. Yeah.”

“At least I get to be a medical mystery.”

As Bruce stepped over to the table Wanda’s phone was on, Peter, Nat, and Steve all filed into Wanda’s room of the medical wing. The second Wanda saw Steve’s face, her stomach turned over. He looked pretty sleepless for a super-soldier. Which first begged how long he’d gone without rest— secondly, how long she’d been out.

“Hey, kid.” Nat smiled at Wanda and sat down beside her, lightly punching her shoulder. “How was the beauty rest? I could’ve thought Pepper changed her mind and got you.” She smirked. All Wanda could do was smile and lace her fingers together, then pull them apart over and over again until everyone was settled.

“Okay, I had a weird dream so now I need to tend to some business,” Wanda announced, staring daggers into the ground. May as well knock the easiest thing off the list first, right? “FRIDAY, cashapp Peter $20.”

“Dude—” Peter’s jaw dropped. “I— I can’t with you right now.” He covered his reddened face with his hand and shook his head. “Okay. okay. What else?”

“Are you two having a conversation—?” Nat interjected.

“No. Moving on,” Peter shook his head and let out a laugh that sounded something like a screech. “What else.”

“Uh…” Wanda’s gaze passed around the room. “Stephen there’s no way I can talk to dead people. Like, no way at all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I think Loki’s right.”

“About what?” Steve asked. He had that look in his eye, but probably for all the wrong reasons. Even though Loki proved to be a good ally at the end of the day, Steve didn’t really get along with them very well. It was like watching a cat and dog bark and hiss at one another, and it was difficult to tell who was the cat and who was the dog at times.

“Steve…” Wanda turned to Bruce, unsure of what to say. He just shrugged at her. Giving a rough sigh, she returned her gaze to Steve, resigned. “You might want to sit down for this one.”

**Author's Note:**

> Iyano- “Shit” in Ukrainian 
> 
> I hope y’all enjoyed :^))


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